(27-03-2013 05:17 PM)f stop Wrote: In 2010 the PEW Research Center conducted a survey of people's knowledge of religion. Only Jewish respondents scored higher than atheists/agnostics. Why? People have told me that it's because atheists want to study up on what the do not believe in so they can trump theists in debates. I don't think that's the case, certainly not for me. As a young man I studied the Bible searching for truth, searching for salvation. I didn't find it.

Religion is history, too. How much of us are history buffs? It's also has a psychological component, as well as philosophical. Those are all interests. I really don't go around debating people, at all. I just read a lot, maybe have some discussions. It just interests me (like Cheap said).

Pretty much the same. As a young child, I was repeatedly told that I was a Catholic. As an older child, I decided to figure out precisely what that meant. As soon as I actually read the bible (and other religious texts), I realized I was not and had never been a Christian. It just took a while to find the term "atheist" because this was before the internet and everyone I knew was Catholic.

But I agree: many atheists are atheists precisely because they know a lot about religion.